User talk:DigitalIceAge

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PowerBook 100 under FA Review

I have nominated PowerBook 100 for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. George Ho (talk) 08:29, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey DIA, saw your comments on the FAR page. Obviously the missing context is something I highlighted on the talk page, but I don't particularly see where that argues against a consolidation. The 100 has some design info that's separate, but there's a lot of redundant info across them (or it would be redundant if the 140 and 170 actually covered the info that's in the 100 article at present) and they were released as a set. Perhaps the 100 has enough separate reception and development info to be better apart, but that's not really evident at present. Regardless, I'm probably going to work on the PowerBook 100 series as a parent article with an eye to merging the other minor SKUs there; perhaps the 100 fits best there ultimately, perhaps not. Cheers! Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 23:16, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David, I apologize if I sounded kind of curt in that reply on the FAR page. I do think that most entires in the 100 line are independently notable and warrant their own pages. Many, many dead-tree magazines, newspapers, and even several published books spilled a lot of ink about the nuances of the individual models, and I think that consolidation wouldn't do justice to the coverage. I know WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but it's like the difference between the various iPhones, iPhone Pros, and iPhone SEs across the years, all of which have their own articles.

Being that the bulk of the sources were published before the Internet, Google is very terrible at uncovering them, but I have access to ProQuest, Gale, and Newspapers.com, and I can tell you that sources number in the hundreds. As you can tell by my user page, I am trying desperately to rescue articles on vintage technology—it is frustrating dealing with the allergy to secondary sources that most of the article stewards had, but I also can't blame them because Google genuinely is so bad at scrounging up the relevant literature. It makes for very a recentist landscape on Wikipedia, where we have hundreds of articles on individual gaming consoles, smartphones, tablets, every flavor and subcomponent of Linux ever, etc. but their ancestors get a one sentence mention if they're lucky, all because the databases don't allow themselves to be indexed by Google. DigitalIceAge (talk) 16:18, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, no worries, I didn't feel you were curt. I don't disagree with them being notable, it's more whether or not they're better pages discussed in aggregate than apart (basically WP:PAGEDECIDE stuff.) I've been using a bunch of books and online databases to improve our iMac coverage so I'm definitely familiar with how much you need to search beyond Google these days, especially for pre-ubiquitous internet stuff. But there's plenty of other places to improve that don't have any apparent will to do something about them so I'm probably going to keep chipping away there. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:46, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More redirect requests

Hi. Can you please redirect these two?102.156.65.169 (talk) 13:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me?102.159.156.200 (talk) 18:49, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I don't understand the request. DigitalIceAge (talk) 18:50, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Set them to target here, if you don't mind.102.159.156.200 (talk) 18:52, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. DigitalIceAge (talk) 18:54, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~Can you redirect user:torai to user:tóraí, its associated talk page and possibly others and distinguish any of them to user:torai~enwiki and/or its talk page?~~102.159.156.200 (talk) 20:01, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Nevermind.[reply]

I am not allowed to create redirects to userpages. DigitalIceAge (talk) 20:13, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for making that request. Thank you anyways.102.159.156.200 (talk) 20:19, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No prob. DigitalIceAge (talk) 20:20, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. Do you have access to create templates?

If you did, please don't 4get to transclude them to their respective articles. (Hint: Follow the example of Template:Latest stable software release/Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac)41.230.176.126 (talk) 19:16, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. DigitalIceAge (talk) 19:29, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Can you please redirect PENSONIC to pensonic Group? Also, happy third anniversary to your account creation as well as first edit.41.230.168.159 (talk) 18:04, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. And thank you! DigitalIceAge (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. It is me again, only relocated. Last year, I posted my concerns regarding Template:Timeline Windows on WP:TfD and eventually did what I was adviced, only to have my thoughts archived. Any ideas or any actions you have the ability take?197.244.232.1 (talk) 19:28, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think once the X-axis year labels start to collide each other is the point at which the timeline should be split. In my opinion, as for now, I think nothing should be done. DigitalIceAge (talk) 23:52, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Conglomerate companies disestablished in 2024

A tag has been placed on Category:Conglomerate companies disestablished in 2024 indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:43, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of Computer Chronicles episodes

Hi, I am wondering where you got the Original air dates from? Some videos on the archive have a record date in the beginning, others a broadcast date, others nothing. ZombieLeChuck (talk) 11:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't exactly remember, but I think I got the air dates from TheTVDB.com. Reliable sources about dates are hard to come by; I could probably find newspaper columns on Newspapers.com establishing the air dates of individual episodes, but unfortunately that service is down right now. DigitalIceAge (talk) 18:48, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just found a site with people who take care of retrieving meta data from the tapes (https://computerchronicles.karpour.net/). Will see if they correspond. Thanks! ZombieLeChuck (talk) 07:07, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Help for Draft:Siliconix

Hi, me again. Given your expertise in similar old tech companies' histories, I would like to ask your help in Siliconix article that is in draft. Only extensive info that I could find about the company were Vishay webpage, EEJournal curation and news regarding Vishay's acquisition of the company. As far as I remember you have a good collection of old tech magazines so it would be awesome if you can find more, better sources. Thanks in advance! VectorVoyager (talk) 14:21, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Punching in '"Siliconix" "Hugle"' into Google Books I'm seeing a number of good books that discuss the company's history at length. Unfortunately most are only in snippet form. I'll see what I can do. Right now I'm waiting for the WMF to repair Wikipedia Library proxy login access to Newspapers.com, as that's been invaluable to me in researching defunct tech companies in particular. DigitalIceAge (talk) 21:37, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@VectorVoyager: Finally got access back to Newspapers.com and expanded the article. Take a look: Siliconix. DigitalIceAge (talk) 18:02, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks nice, thank you! VectorVoyager (talk) 14:33, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hi DigitalIceAge. Thank you for your work on Technology Connections. Another editor, Sdkb, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

This article was quite recently deleted at AfD. It seems you've created it independently, possibly unaware of that. You have a few sources not discussed at the AfD, but they're pretty iffy in terms of qualifying for notability, so on the whole this article is still on shaky ground. As such, I'm removing its autopatrolled status to give an independent reviewer the opportunity to check its notability.

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|Sdkb}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

Sdkb ^talk 15:21, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, I was aware of the AfD nomination; that's how I found some of the sources needed to flesh out the page. The article cites plenty of sources with sigcov of Watson's channel, with plenty of opinion and not just mere rote regurgitation of his videos. For example, in a pretty beefy paragraph with editorializing and all, Consumer Reports cites Watson as a direct inspiration for the magazine performing a thorough investigation of the problem he brings up in the video. Which caused Hyundai to respond to CR promising to address the issue! Not what I would call "passing coverage"! DigitalIceAge (talk) 17:44, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dynatech

I've been trying to figure out the connection between Dynatech Nevada, Dyntatech Frontier, Neurodyne-Dempsey and Frontier Enterprises for months now. Incidentally, I'm also looking for FitTester 3000 documentation/floppies, as well as Dynatech Frontier's "Quantafit". Any leads?⸺(Random)staplers 03:26, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In case you're interested to know what I've found so far...
- What's bothering me is this source: [1]. I haven't been able to find anybody who has access to those documents cited in that paper.
- The only documents I have been able to find Dynatech Frontier Corp is this brochure as well as the NRC document I used as a citation. It's got a pretty unique concentric circle logo... pretty different from the Dynatech logo.
- Somewhere during the 1990s, OHD got access to the "FitTester 3000" name and eventually the OHD "Quantifit" came out.
- AFAIK, I don't see how these two "Dynatech" companies are related...
Ping me if you have any thoughts. ⸺(Random)staplers 03:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Randomstaplers: As far as I can tell, all those companies are indeed connected to Dynatech Corp. of Boston whose article I wrote today. Dynatech Nevada was Dynatech Corp.'s biomedical instruments division, sold to Lionheart Technologies d/b/a Bio-Tek Instruments in 1996 amid a divesting spree; Bio-Tek later sold it to Fluke (source). Can't find much concrete information on Neurodyne-Dempsey, but Dynatech had already acquired them by 1979 according to this report. Dynatech Frontier was Dynatech Corp.'s "particulate matter test equipment" division (source) formed after the acquisition of Frontier Enterprises in 1979 (source).

Archive.org has a cache of PDFs related to the FitTester 3000 here: https://web.archive.org/pdf/search/%22FitTester%203000%22%20year:1996-2016 . ~~Not sure about lengthy documentation, but I saw a few brochures in there.~~ There's this manual for the FitTester, don't know if it's of the proper vintage you're looking for, but it looks to be comprehensive.

Quantafit is turning up diddly-squat in any of the researh databases I have access to. That scan of the Quantafit is pretty crunchy, but I can tell that's a Datavue Snap laptop with what looks like a funky proprietary ISA card that measures air pressure, to ensure that a respirator is properly sealed? Very strange and cool... DigitalIceAge (talk) 04:21, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No floppies unfortunately, but this snapshot of OHD's website from 2014 has Windows 7/8 software for the FitTester 3000 and the Quantifit. DigitalIceAge (talk) 04:32, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've already got the software for those, unfortunately it's not compatible with early FitTester 3000s. Also I noticed the archive.org search is turning up a bunch of newer OHD stuff...

Something I am a bit worried about: These companies also produced videos with the help of local TV stations. Seemingly only the Argus-Hazco channel has bothered archiving them, and of course, the tape I'm looking for is not on that channel...⸺(Random)staplers 04:38, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The FT3000 looks like a tough nut to crack: the only ones on eBay for sale currently don't have any floppy software, and even the recently sold examples don't. If in the unlikely event I ever come across a complete unit in the wild, I will be sure to image the floppies and upload them to archive.org.

Instruction tapes are even more elusive - I would recommend setting up some saved searches on eBay and play the waiting game... DigitalIceAge (talk) 05:33, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I was lucky to get one with a 3M bayonet adapter included, so at least it's actually useful for something... Unfortunately, it came with absolutely no documentation. I was able to find some serial commands with the OHD software, but it includes new commands that my FT3K doesn't support.⸺(Random)staplers 05:51, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(And by 'bayonet' I mean the 3M 6000 series filters, released in the 90s, and since copied by every opportunistic manufacturer ever...)
Also, good luck finding adapters and tubing from OHD if you don't have them. They aren't for sale anywhere, last I checked.⸺(Random)staplers 05:54, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Technology Connections

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A tag has been placed on Technology Connections requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G4 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be a repost of material that was previously deleted following a deletion discussion, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Technology Connections. When a page has substantially identical content to that of a page deleted after a discussion, and any changes in the content do not address the reasons for which the material was previously deleted, it may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Bobby Cohn (talk) 01:23, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Bobby Cohn: Did you actually read the article as it stood when the AfD closed? It resembles nothing like the current version whatsoever. The tag is bogus on those grounds, so I have reverted it. Please do your research before nominating articles for G4 speedily deletion; don't just assume that a recreated article is a Ctrl+C Ctrl+V job. DigitalIceAge (talk) 01:41, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, my apologies. I hadn't checked to see if the page had been archived, so I was trying to evaluate if the arguments made in the AfD looked like they applied to the current revision. All the best, Bobby Cohn (talk) 02:06, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No worries! DigitalIceAge (talk) 02:13, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

re the SVG's for Logitech

Thanks for the updated logo images for Logitech. I've almost no experience manipulating image stuff on WP; I was wondering if there's a way you could separate each of them as their own 'box', with even a slight gap between them? When I look at them, it's (mildly) confusing which text goes with each image, because they're all 'connected' so to speak. No worries if you can't, it's a very small matter! cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:22, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No prob! Yes, {{Multiple image}} has an image_gap parameter that can be set to add a larger gap around the images. I've just set it to 15 (3× larger than the default gap). DigitalIceAge (talk) 22:28, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much! Definitely an improvement. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:34, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for September 9

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Nomination of Technology Connections for deletion

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The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Technology Connections (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

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StewdioMACK (talk) 09:55, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Help with Accel edits

Hi, DigitalIceAge. It's nice to meet you. I work for Accel and I've declared my COI, which means I can't edit the firm's page directly. I noticed your impressive editing and interest in companies, including Accel way back in 2022, and was hoping you'd be willing to consider my suggested improvements and updates to the Accel entry, detailed here: Talk:Accel_(company)#Consolidation_and_Clarity. Thank you for your review and input, SClay53 (talk) 16:47, 6 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Erroneous newline

I've been adding whitespace between templates related to the title, setup and content control and similar looking source statements that produces actual article content, typically infoboxes, navboxes and lead images. And more whitespace prior to the start of the lead. This whitespace doesn't affect rendering of the article so I wouldn't describe it as erroneous. It helps me more easily locate key pieces of source code when editing. I appreciate that it is not productive to twiddle this stuff back and forth so I only add whitespace in conjunction with other improvements and I don't revert anyone who wants to remove it and I don't actually think is is something worth arguing about but since you apparently feel strongly enough to revert these, I thought I'd let you know my thinking. ~Kvng (talk) 00:02, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In this case it actually did affect the rendering by creating a blank paragraph at the very top of the article body. On my browser this makes for a distractingly bigger-than-usual gap between the title heading and the first paragraph of the lede. I don't know if that's MediaWiki's parser glitching out or a fault with the infobox template or what. DigitalIceAge (talk) 00:28, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see this but I have some other stuff occupying that gap from tools like ShortDesc Helper. I'll stop adding WS and maybe try to figure out what's going on. Thanks for sharing the screenshot. ~Kvng (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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SVG logos

I just wrote the following essay page, let me know if you have any comments on it! Since you've quite frequently contributed them :) Wikipedia:Find SVG logos. PhotographyEdits (talk) 21:24, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PhotographyEdits: Excellent job! Since this advice also applies at Wikimedia Commons, I would recommend copying this page to Wikimedia Commons (under, say, Commons:Find SVG logos).

On an unrelated note, since I know you like ThinkPads a lot, I'm currently working on a comprehensive list of all models in the range in my userspace at User:DigitalIceAge/List of ThinkPad models. It's a mammoth undertaking but will be well worth it in the end, I think.

Unfortunately, I don't have as much free time to work on big projects like this at the moment, so if you want to take a stab at completing it, feel free to contribute to that page, however you see fit. I initialy borrowed from this list from thinkwiki.org and this spreadsheet copied from Lenovo's website to populate the list, stripping all details beyond model names and such. DigitalIceAge (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Great list! I would suggest removing the brand column and instead mentioning in the lead that models after a certain date because Lenovo, with a link to the acquisition article. I'll try to fill in some more info when I have time for that, it's an article that should've already existed. :)

Will copy the essay to Commons, good idea! PhotographyEdits (talk) 11:51, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the brand column. I was thinking about the series / model columns and I'm not really a fan because:

They are frequently the same
If they are not the same, they commonly link to the same article

I'm not supporting merging rows to de-duplicate series because that hinders sorting.

What do you think about Model (Series) as a format, in a single column? And then making the (Series) optional. A downside of this is that it would need to duplicate the literal series a lot, because for example T20 (T) is unclear.

We could also merge the series and model column together only if they link to the same article. I think that is the best option, but I'm not really sure. PhotographyEdits (talk) 15:42, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The changes look good. I think we can just eliminate the series column altogether and link the series articles directly through each model number in the model column, since most of the model numbers have prefixes that imply what series they belong to anyway (e.g. T20 is obviously T series). DigitalIceAge (talk) 23:49, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Terak

Hi! Just curious about your interest/knowledge in Terak. How did that come to be? My father is Dennis. 67.63.80.233 (talk) 16:37, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I had read about the 8510 a few years ago while researching digital image processing and graphics workstations and found the company historically significant enough to write about. I also have a relative who worked at Calcomp in the 1980s and the name came up once. DigitalIceAge (talk) 19:31, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]